The Last Duel

Ridley Scott’s latest epic is initially plodding and episodic but ends on a dramatic and powerful note.

Adam Driver and Matt Damon

It is customary to look forward to a new Ridley Scott film with some degree of anticipation. He is a world-class filmmaker who, even at the age of 83, is an intellectual dynamo bursting with new ideas. There just isn’t enough time for Ridley to realise all the projects he has on the go. He has twelve more films in various forms of pre-production, whether as director or producer (and, according to one source, he has another 56 in development). While Ridley’s twenty-seventh film, House of Gucci, is already gathering a head of Oscar steam, his twenty-sixth, The Last Duel, arrives in cinemas ten months late – due to viral complications. Set in France in the 1300s, the film’s talk of plague will no doubt prompt snorts of recognition, although its heart is closer to #MeToo.

This is the true story of Marguerite de Carrouges (Jodie Comer, excellent) who, in 1386, claimed that she was raped by her husband’s squire and best friend, Jacques Le Gris (Adam Driver). To uphold his honour, Marguerite’s husband Jean de Carrouges (Matt Damon) challenges the latter to a duel, the last to be legally sanctioned in French history. And it is a duel to the death, the victor’s triumph confirming either the truth or the fabrication of the charge. So, should Jean fail to ‘uphold his honour’, his death, by God’s will, would sentence Marguerite to be burned alive for being a liar. This sort of injustice is not easy to contemplate today and it is the story that is the film’s brutal strength. So much so that it is told three times, Rashomon-style, from the perspective of Jean, Jacques and, most effectively, from the viewpoint of Marguerite.

Not surprisingly, The Last Duel is visually miraculous. In fact, it seems a shame that the vistas of Medieval Normandy and Paris – with the Notre Dame still under construction – and some of the battles – are not afforded more screen time, as they cannot have come cheap. Additionally, the film would have benefitted from more emotional downtime between Jean and Marguerite, although it may have undermined the conceit of the triple perspective. Indeed, it is not until the final and third chapter that the film wakes up and we see Jean and Jacques for what they truly are – through the eyes of Marguerite. Jean is pious, dull, humourless, vain, self-centred and illiterate. Jacques is literate, articulate, arrogant, crude, offensive and Machiavellian. If at all possible, the film’s third male character, Count Pierre d'Alençon, is even more contemptible, being a debauched, amoral, greedy, sadistic and two-timing count, played with withering insouciance by Ben Affleck. It is to Damon and Affleck’s credit that they were willing to play such unsympathetic men, not to mention the fact that they co-wrote the screenplay, in collaboration with Nicole Holofcener.

The film’s length may prove problematic for some (it is 153 minutes), but there is enough here to keep an audience engaged, particularly had all the superfluous preamble been jettisoned from the outset, sparing us all the flying dates and the plodding, episodic nature of the first half hour. Ridley would also have saved himself a big chunk of his $100m budget. Ultimately, this is Marguerite's story, and not the chronicle of Normandy up until that point (Ridley does love a good battle). The Last Duel is epic stuff, but its core belongs to Marguerite and one senses that had Nicole Holofcener had more of a say, it would have been a better (if less bloody) film.

JAMES CAMERON-WILSON

Cast: Matt Damon, Adam Driver, Jodie Comer, Ben Affleck, Harriet Walter, Željko Ivanek, Marton Csokas, Alex Lawther, William Houston, Oliver Cotton, Aurélien Lorgnier, Nathaniel Parker, Tallulah Haddon, Sam Hazeldine, Clive Russell, Julian Firth, Caoimhe O'Malley, John Kavanagh, Clare Dunne, Brontis Jodorowsky, Bosco Hogan.

Dir Ridley Scott, Pro Ridley Scott, Kevin J. Walsh, Jennifer Fox, Nicole Holofcener, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, Screenplay Nicole Holofcener, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, from the book by Eric Jager, Ph Dariusz Wolski, Pro Des Arthur Max, Ed Claire Simpson, Music Harry Gregson-Williams, Costumes Janty Yates, Dialect coach Tim Monich.

Scott Free Productions/Pearl Street Films/TSG Entertainment-Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures UK.
153 mins. USA/UK. 2021. Rel: 15 October 2021. Cert. 18.